Create Plexus plugin-like effect
I would use Sverchok (A Blender node system for Geometry)

Click on the image to view full size.



How it works is you feed Sverchok a base mesh, in this case the blue Icosphere with some distorted noise displacement. This mesh is used to generate a second set of vertices positioned some distance away in the direction of the vertex normal. The vertex normal is defined by the average face normal of all faces which are connected to a vertex.

This new set of vertices has the same vertex index order, this means we can reuse the edge list (list of vertex indices which makes up each edge) and create tubing from the resulting edges.

The new set of vertices is also used to place duplicated instances of the node sphere (in this case a NURBS SurfaceSphere)


Alpha_0 : This mesh is outputted by the BMeshViewDraw node. Because it's only outputting one mesh the name has _0 appended. This node outputs the new (offset) vertices. 


In the properties of Alpha_0 switch on duplication to Vertex. 
(I dragged the duplication menu-item to the top for convenience)


Sigma_0 : The tubes, Curve Objects, generated by SvCurveViewer Sigma. These tubes are built from new vertices and old edge list. 

SurfSphere: In properties set the parent to Alpha_0, this will then duplicate the SurfSphere at every vertex of Alpha_0's mesh.
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You'll notice as soon as you parent an object, that the child becomes part of the parent item. The outliner shows it like this:



Result:





Pros and Cons:

Pro:


Learn Sverchok, it can be applied to many scenarios involving geometry
Sverchok is 150+ nodes which can be combined to give a massive amount of modulation in your end result
I co-write Sverchok, if you have questions about how it works visit the issue tracker. 


Con:


You have to install and enable Sverchok, it does not come with Blender
At first it might seem confusing, but it works very similar to any other node system. Nodes take input and perform some operation and produce output. Each node does something different, generally the name of the node is sufficient to indicate what it does.